Hidden
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Saturday, May 25, 2013
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Flash mob at 2pm on Saturday 25th May. Don't forget your towel, with it any Strag (read muggle) will assume you have your facalties. Hoopy froods always know where their towels are, after all.
Are you ready for Towel Day on May 25th? Honour the memory of Douglas Adams, writer of the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy, by carrying your towel on May 25th.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost." What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.) —Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy The emphasis on towels is a reference to Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe by Ken Walsh, which inspired Adams' fictional guidebook and also stresses the importance of towels.
For those wishing to mix a PGB:
1 part Everclear (or any other strong grain alcohol such as Bourbon, Moonshine, or Vodka)
1 part Bitter Lemon (or plain Tonic Water)
1 part Bombay Sapphire Gin (or other gin)
1 part Yukon Jack Perma-Frost Schnapps (or other mint schnapps, or white crème de menthe) Enough blue food coloring to make the mixture a very light sky blue Also needed:
Sugar cubes
Cinnamon extract
Yellow food coloring (optional)
Angostura Bitters
Olives
Mix the first five ingredients and chill (usually for 24 hours). Then, take a sugar cube and let it absorb 1 milliliter of cinnamon extract and 1 drop of yellow food coloring (optional). Place three ice cubes in a glass and pour the chilled liquid mixture over these. Drop in the sugar cube and stir to dissolve, or just let it sit (if food coloring is used, often the sugar cube is just left to sit, to create a layering effect with the color). Sprinkle the Angostura Bitters in the drink, and add an olive. Drink, but very carefully.
Alternatively, one can let the sugar cube absorb 1 milliliter of Angostura Bitters, and sprinkle ground cinnamon on the top of the drink, thus omitting the cinnamon extract.
It is often more convenient to make a large amount of the mixture ahead of time and chill for a day, rather than to constantly mix more of it. It's also best to save it for a special occasion, such as Towel Day, due to the work put into making the drink.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Oevat n GBJRY